I’ve exhausted an anecdote about my failing plant parenting skills in the last one, leaving behind an introduction vacuum. Who needs an introduction anyway? I’m sure we’ll all survive without one in this case.
Right after I finished The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), I rewatched the superior Little Shop of Horrors (1986). This film doesn’t just build upon the original, but also makes up for everything the source missed out upon. I feel as this one is going to be rather sparse; I can think my alcohol riddled mind for this one as I can’t seem to collect my wits to write this properly, that also may be due to the fact that there a cacophony of noise blasting down my ear canal. Metal music is something that I haven’t been able to handle and I assume that taste will never be acquired. Goddamn, this tangent has absolutely nothing to do with the matter at hand, stop trying to divert yourself off the topic, stay resolute amidst this gaggle of bass drums and drunken noise. In retrospect, I should’ve written this in silence and solitude but I’m in too deep and can’t leave, unless I feign some terrible illness or heart attack.
Following the same plot as the original where a geeky green-thumbed gardener grows a mutant plant that brings in big money and exposure to a run-down florist on skid-row, until the plant begins to wreak havoc all over the goddamn street, Frank Oz’s version in question here builds upon the characterisation in a way that makes for a smoother unfolding of the plot. The original felt as if I was thrust into the moulds of the characters without any justification of preparation, while here I was eased into their motivations. Though they’re virtual reconstructions of the original characters, I grew to like all of them better within the first 10 minutes. Maybe that’s to do with the fact that Classical Hollywood character skeletons are quite weak and arthritic for modern standards, but they’re just written better and they feel like people rather than mannequins who’ve learnt how to talk. The whole cast carry the load of the film upon their shoulders with such ease and enjoyment that I just couldn’t help but feel part of the whole scene, especially Steve Martin and Ellen Greene, playing such terrible and lovable characters respectively.
What really takes this affair to the next level is the song-dance numbers. Who would’ve thought, turning an idea into a musical would take it far and wide into the pits of camp. Some intensely heavy Rocky Horror Picture Show vibrations were emanating off the screen when watching this film but that could just be down to the fact that both are horror-musicals, if that’s your type of poison, go in for it because you’ll have your socks grooved off by the extremely funky numbers, especially those amazing organ scores reserved for the Audrey II.
For me personally, what makes this film in particular wonderful to experience is the cinematography. Camera floating on cranes and dollys to show the dilapidation of skid-row create the sense of an enclosed bubble that bursts once the Audrey II’s plans explode into the rest of the world. Hey, did someone hear the tune of capitalism? The capitalistic connotations are amped up all the way to 11 in this one, mass production and consumerism for the sake of difference gets in terrible fingerprints all over the events of the film better than the first one could take as far. Alright enough with capitalism, let’s get back to the cinematography. There’s a bunch of wonderful match-cuts that tickled my cinematic bone and for someone who has such a sharp eye for these sorts of things, not to toot my own goddamn broken horn here, I feel like this this film would be a blast for the rest of you! Pair that up with the studio level set design and you’ve got a beautifully campy film that has the 80’s smeared all over it.
It’s ironic that a film which barely produced itself through the constraints of left-over budget and low-level filmmaking got to see itself reborn through the studio into an immaculate piece of groovy cinema. I wonder whether if this film would’ve looked as it does if it had originally made it onto the A feature during the 60’s. We’ll never live to see that day though; all we can do is speculate and imagine until we get a headache.
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